Poker Revenue At PokerStars Grows 12.5 Percent In Third Quarter Despite Player Pool Remaining FlatCustomers Pay $221M In Poker Rake Over Three-Month Period |
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The parent company of the world’s most-played online poker site enjoyed a strong third quarter, according to financial data made public by the firm this week.
The Stars Group, formerly known as Amaya Gaming, said that total revenues for the quarter ending Sept. 30 increased 21.7 percent year-over-year to $329.4 million. Revenue from the first nine months of the year was nearly $1 billion, up 12.7 percent compared to the same period last year.
Stars owns and operates PokerStars.com, which controls the majority of the worldwide online poker market. According to Stars, it also has the world’s “largest online gambling platform.”
Real-money poker revenue for the quarter was $221.4 million, an increase of 12.5 percent year-over-year. However, if you exclude the impact of changes in foreign exchange rates, real-money online poker revenues would have increased by 7.5 percent.
Still, it was a good result for the company, which had to pull out of the Australian online poker market in mid-September after a local law change.
The company said the poker increase was “primarily driven” by the implementation of the Stars Rewards loyalty program in July, which increased customer game play.
Stars said that its “Quarterly Real-Money Active Uniques” (QAUs) across all of its products were about 2.1 million, an increase of 2.1 percent year-over-year. That was aided by the re-launch of PokerStars in Portugal in late 2016. Nearly all—about two million—of those QAUs played online poker during the quarter, which remained virtually flat year-over-year, Stars said.
In other words, poker revenue increased despite the number of poker customers remaining unchanged. Stars’ Chief Executive Officer Rafi Ashkenazi said in a statement that the firm saw “improvement” in its poker business.
Despite the poker gains, the game represented a smaller portion of the overall revenue pie than during the same quarter last year. Online poker revenues and online casino and sportsbook combined revenues represented 67.2 percent and 28.9 percent of total revenues for the quarter, respectively, as compared to 72.7 percent and 23.7 percent for the prior year period.
Revenues from the company’s online casino and sportsbook offerings for the quarter were $95.2 million, an increase of about 48.3 percent year-over-year.
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